There's a growing buzz round the Mac traps about the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 release. It seems that an increasing number of software developers are planning to make the next version of their apps run only on 10.5, a.k.a Leopard.

Usually developers try to ensure their apps run on whatever the latest version of Mac OS X is and, at least, the previous major version as well (e.g. NWX currently works with Mac OS 10.4.x and 10.3.9) however, due to some significant new APIs and enhanced developer tools available in 10.5, this may not be the case this time - many new and upgraded Mac OS X apps will apparently require 10.5 so they can take advantage of these new features and deliver compelling new functionality to their users.

You can see where I'm going with this... I have no idea what plans Nisus has in this area for NWX, and I realize they cannot comment on unannounced products, but I think it's something all NWX users should start thinking about (recall the cries of pain when Nisus dropped support for OS X 10.2 a while back). 10.5 is due out between March - May (though Mr Jobs may have updates to this schedule next week at MacWorld, knowing Apple it might be released earlier than previously scheduled) so the day of reckoning is approaching.

What if a new version of NWX is released this year that contains one or more features you're hanging out for - e.g. ToC, indexes, comments, outlining, multiple windows for each document, etc. - but it requires you to upgrade to OS X 10.5 to run it (or at least to use those new features)? Are you still interested? 10.5 will presumably cost about the same as the last couple of OS X upgrades ($US199 as I recall) and the new version of NWX may also involve an upgrade fee this time (or not, we can always hope). Still interested? Whatever you feel about this it's certainly time to start thinking about 10.5 and how it will affect you in 2007.

Well personally I'm looking forward to Leopard because I've read somewhere or other that it will no longer dependent on screen resolution to scale what is seen on screen.

For some time now Apple have been making computers with 96 dpi screens but the applications are all designed to work on 72 dpi screens.

This is a big nuisance imho. On many, including Nisus Writer Express, we have a zoom but not all. The most notable problem being Apple Mail, or in fact any mail client where you wish to send an email using RTF or HTML. In this case you are stuck with a small font for writing because if you increase it then the recipient gets something with possibly huge text. Obviously this is not a problem with plain text emails but personally I like sending RTF emails

So, I will be updating to Leopard when it comes out.

With respect to the actual question about Nisus Writer Express, I think that if Leopard provides the possibility for doing things better in the program then Nisus would be best to go with that. After all upgrading is not compulsory, if people with to remain with earlier versions of the OS then they can always stick with the earlier version of Nisus Writer Express.

Historically Nisus have always tended to exploit developments in the Mac OS and to go further with this than anyone else. Nisus Writer Classic for example was the only OpenDoc host available for the classic OS most famously but also it was very early with other cool things like Editable Graphic Objects.

I think the brilliant ability to insert a page as a graphic in Nisus Writer Classic is one of the earliest examples of this kind of thing that I know of.

Anyway my feeling is that Nisus should do what they've always done and be at the cutting edge of things.

Apple OS upgrades have NEVER cost as much as $199US. The family pack costs that much.

My answer to your question, though, is: it won't matter to me. My Mac is my life. I consider upgrading to the latest version of the OS, and any application that I depend on, as merely the cost of doing business (which, by the way, is teaching and writing, so I'm not wealthy!). If Nisus Writer Pro requires OS 10.5, it won't matter at all to me. These are no brainer upgrades.

If it is as fast or (preferably) faster, has less bugs and is more stable, doesn't use more memory, is easier to customize (not talking about appearance but about functionality), then I would welcome an upgrade and don't even mind paying for it.

swilcox wrote:Apple OS upgrades have NEVER cost as much as $199US. The family pack costs that much.

My answer to your question, though, is: it won't matter to me. My Mac is my life. I consider upgrading to the latest version of the OS, and any application that I depend on, as merely the cost of doing business (which, by the way, is teaching and writing, so I'm not wealthy!). If Nisus Writer Pro requires OS 10.5, it won't matter at all to me. These are no brainer upgrades.

Of course, according to Dave's blog on Jan 11, Nisus Writer Pro will not require Leopard.

It seems to be a feature specific to the new version of TextEdit that comes with Leopard. Even Pages 3.0.1 (iWork '08) can't import/export ODF and Word 2007's OOXML formats like the new TextEdit apparently can (though perhaps that's just because it's currently not running under Leopard). For Nisus to be able to leverage ODF/OOXML support directly it would presumably have to be part of the Leopard text engine, and it's unclear if this is the case or not currently. If ODF/OOXML support has been included in the Leopard version of the textutil command as well as TextEdit that would probably mean it is part of Leopard's text engine and TextEdit is simply using it to do the translations. Presumably then future versions of Nisus would be able to use the same APIs (when running under Leopard) and gain the same feature. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

scottwhitlock wrote:Pages 3 can import Office 2007 docx files. I'm not sure if this is what you mean, though.

No, it's a feature added to TextEdit which I would assume NW would adopt since I believe NW uses the same engine as TextEdit. I also noticed Leopard adds a grammar checker so this would probably be added to NW as well, not that I like grammar checkers but they can be helpful in rare situations.

craigminah wrote:No, it's a feature added to TextEdit which I would assume NW would adopt since I believe NW uses the same engine as TextEdit.

Not necessarily; the fact that the same engine is being used does not mean that the same import filters are going to be used. Right now, for instance, both TextEdit and NW can read Word documents, but NW uses AbiConvert to do that job while TextEngine uses its own .doc filters. I'm not even sure if these import filters used by Apple inside the operating system are accessible to third party developers, though I guess they should be.

scottwhitlock wrote:Pages 3 can import Office 2007 docx files. I'm not sure if this is what you mean, though.

Yes, .docx is the file extension for Microsoft Word's new Office Open XML (OOXML) file format. Apple's documentation says "Pages can import the following file formats: plain text (.txt), Rich Text Format (.rtf and .rtfd), AppleWorks 6 word processing (.cwk), and Microsoft Word (.doc)". It says nothing about .docx. I went with the Apple documentation, but it seems this is incomplete. Thanks.

It can definitely import it (I use it everyday when my students send me a .docx file). However, Pages only exports the old .doc format. This was started with Pages 3.0, as Pages 2.0 did not have the capability to deal with .docx at all. Pages translates Word documents (both .doc and .docx) very well actually, probably the best translation I've seen on the Mac except for maybe NeoOffice (which, because of the interface, is a terror to use and it can't tap into the Services menu and...)...

I only wish that I could have the things that I love in Pages to be present in NWP. Better graphics handling, horizontal rules, paragraph borders, hyphenation (which Pages handles well). Maybe one day... Until then, I treat NWP as just another member of the iWork suite.

scottwhitlock wrote:Pages 3 can import Office 2007 docx files. I'm not sure if this is what you mean, though.

No, it's a feature added to TextEdit which I would assume NW would adopt since I believe NW uses the same engine as TextEdit. I also noticed Leopard adds a grammar checker so this would probably be added to NW as well, not that I like grammar checkers but they can be helpful in rare situations.

I'm wondering if the grammar checker in Leopard is like the one now in Pages 3?
But then grammar checkers seem to be rather troublesome, finding
problems that aren't there and missing ones that are.